This invention pertains to the art of wheel chairs and more particularly to adjustable wheel chairs.
The invention is particularly applicable to adjustable wheel chairs of the type which may be folded between a normal opened or use position and a closed or storage position and which further allow some type of seat height and/or width adjustment and will be described with particular reference thereto; however, it will be appreciated by those skilled in the art that the invention has broader applications and could be advantageously employed in other environments.
Heretofore, there have been any number of collapsible wheel chair designs which have been introduced and met with commercial success. Some of these prior collapsible wheel chair designs have had fixed seat heights and widths so that many different sizes would be required to properly accommodate specific needs of users thereof. Some prior designs have attempted to reduce the number of sizes required to properly service height or seat width adjustment so as to create a more universal type of wheel chair adaptable to the specific needs of many situations. However, prior collapsible and adjustable wheel chair designs have only made provision for either seat height or seat width adjustments but not height and width adjustments independent of each other which would render the wheel chairs truly universal ones. Those prior designs attempting to provide both seat height and width adjustments were such that the height and width dimensions were both necessarily simultaneously altered when making any adjustments allowed.
Accordingly, it has been desired in the industry to develop a wheel chair design which would be universal from the standpoint that the seat height and width dimensions could be altered completely independent of each other. Such a design would then permit a substantial reduction in the separate types and sizes of wheel chairs stocked by hospitals, rental agencies, medical supply houses and the like since such a design could be successfully utilized in satisfying the various and specific needs of patients or users. Since there is no correlation between the height and width or breadth characteristics between different people, the desirability for having independent seat height and width adjustments are amplified. A universal wheel chair design would be able to eliminate special or separate wheel chairs required to accommodate, for example in the extreme situations, short and unusually heavy or wide persons and tall but unusually thin persons. Moreover, a truly universal wheel chair would facilitate height and width adjustments to suit the individual personal preferences of users and which have not been heretofore available.
The subject invention contemplates a new and improved apparatus which overcomes those problems noted above and provides a new adjustable wheel chair which is simple in design, economical to manufacture, readily adaptable to use in any number of situations and environments and which provides independent seat height and width adjustments.